


fluffy beard

by GlassRose



Series: old guard history [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: (to lovers eventually), 1099, Enemies to Friends, First Meetings, M/M, prequel to send your lightning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:28:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25651351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GlassRose/pseuds/GlassRose
Summary: The man in front of him had a bloody hole in his armor right in his chest. Right where Nicolo had stabbed him to death."You can't--" Nicolo said, hesitating long enough for the Saracen to put his recently-acquired spear through Nicolo's gut.His legs gave out. His sword fell. The ground came up to meet him and he gazed into the sky. He barely felt it when the spear blade was thrust into him again, this time in his chest. The last thing he saw was the man who should be dead looming over him.The last, utterly absurd thought he had before blackness took him was that his killer had a fluffy beard.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: old guard history [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1859689
Comments: 25
Kudos: 348





	fluffy beard

**Author's Note:**

> this is a prequel to "send your lightning" - i made a bunch of changes to that one after posting in order to make the time and languages and arcs work properly

Nicolo made the first kill. Not of the whole battle, just of the private two man hell-cursed battle he found himself in by no deliberate choice of his own. He'd killed before. The Saracens were the enemy of God. If his gut twisted seeing their dead faces before him, he'd live with it later.

They'd broken through, but Nicolo was still outside the walls, fighting with the Saracens who had come out to harass their flanks. He cut down two, and then he felt a burning pain in his side. Spinning around, he spotted the Saracen who'd struck him. Their blades clashed, but this was not a duel. Nicolo braced himself, slammed his foot into his adversary's gut, knocking him down, and brought his sword up to finish him off.

As the blade pierced his chest, his eyes grew wide with fear and pain, and Nicolo stared too long, waiting for his eyes to flutter shut. He shook himself, ignored the nausea churning in his stomach, and retrieved his blade. He took a breath and rejoined the fray. 

Fighting in a battle like this was new. It was long. It was huge. At his back and front were enemies and friends, and though their garb--and for the most part, their skin--marked them different, in the heat of the moment it was hard to focus on who was what. The Saracens were heretics and the Christians were children of God, but with everyone whirling their swords and shouting their battle cries, Nicolo had the brief, blasphemous thought that the difference was almost nothing.

He cut them down anyway. He would throw up later. One of his brothers fell in front of him, and Nicolo raised his sword to kill the heretic who'd slain him--but--

It couldn't be. Surely they all looked the same. Didn't they?

The man in front of him had a bloody hole in his armor right in his chest. Right where Nicolo had stabbed him to death.

"You can't--" Nicolo said, hesitating long enough for the Saracen to put his recently-acquired spear through Nicolo's gut.

His legs gave out. His sword fell. The ground came up to meet him and he gazed into the sky. He barely felt it when the spear blade was thrust into him again, this time in his chest. The last thing he saw was the man who should be dead looming over him.

The last, utterly absurd thought he had before blackness took him was that his killer had a fluffy beard.

When he opened his eyes again, his pain was quickly ebbing away, and the killer was gone. If this was the kingdom of heaven, it was absolute shit. Maybe that was fair. Live as a killer, live your afterlife as a killer.

But no, he wasn't dead. He was still on the battlefield outside Jerusalem. He'd died. He'd died, and now he was back, and his stomach and chest were covered in blood, but the wounds were gone. He hadn't dreamed it. The holes in his mail were proof enough.

Nicolo rolled over and vomited. No, no, no time for that. He was on a battlefield. He scrabbled for his sword, cut himself, saw the wound heal over, and seized the hilt. He was dead and alive, and the man he'd killed had survived death too. He looked frantically for the bastard. No one was really paying any mind to the half-dead soldier on his knees, so he had a moment to breathe.

And there he was, his back to Nicolo, bloodied hole in his armor. Nicolo got to his feet, ran to his enemy, and thrust his sword into the back of his neck. He had to die. He had to. As Nicolo pulled the sword out, the man choked and half-gasped, unable to breathe. He fell backward into Nicolo, his eyes wide with terror and rage. "And  _ stay _ dead!" Nicolo snarled before shoving him off and rejoining the battle.

It continued. Nicolo turned his back and the Saracen put a blade in it. He woke up and tracked him down to kill him. After six rounds of this, Nicolo slew the man and sat down to rest. His helmet was missing and the battle had left them behind. The Saracen's spear was long gone. Save for the bodies that didn't wake, they were alone in a corner of the battlefield.

"Why did you do this to me?" he growled, panting heavily.

The Saracen woke, rolled over, jumped to his feet and grabbed his curved sword. Nicolo met his blows, yelling, "What have you done to me?" in Genoese.

The Saracen got a dirty blow in and sliced his stomach open through the spear-break in his mail. " _Latina_?" he asked as Nicolo cried out in agony and tried to hold his guts in. He took pity on Nicolo quickly, and stabbed him in the heart.

When he woke, he found his sword in seconds and pushed himself up. "What did you do to me?" he demanded again, this time in Latin.

"What?" The Saracen genuinely looked bewildered. "You think  _ I _ did this?" His Latin was vulgar merchant Latin, not the church Latin Nicolo knew better. But they could communicate, finally.

"Take it back!" Nicolo yelled, attacking him. He lost again.  _ Please let this be the last time. Please let me into your Kingdom, _ he begged an uncaring God.

This time when he came back, he held still until he saw the Saracen turn his back, and then he grabbed a fallen soldier's short blade and leaped upon him, stabbing everything he could, over and over, until the enemy's back and neck and legs and arms and head were a mass of bloody wounds, and when the enemy was dead, he kept going. "Stay dead!" he screamed, then he flipped the dead body over and stabbed it some more in a near blind panic until his sword arm ached and he couldn't keep going.

It was over. It had to be. Minutes passed and the Saracen didn't wake. Nicolo stared at him. His dark eyes. His fluffy beard that was burned into Nicolo's brain for some unfathomable reason.

His eyes that held such open feelings. His pain and fear and rage. Like any Christian. "Oh God," Nicolo moaned. He was alone. He was alone, and he was most likely cursed to never see the kingdom of heaven, and the only person in the world who might have helped or might be under the same curse was dead by his hand. "Oh God, please. Please wake up." He was talking in Genoese again. Latin, he speaks Latin, he thought, and switched to it as best he could. "Please come back. I don't understand, I…" He dropped his blade, hugged his knees, and tried to pray as the sun set over the bloody field.  _ I am your servant, my God, please do not leave me alone. I do not understand why I have incurred your wrath. Please, show me the way. Mary, mother of God, intercede, I beg you. _

The Saracen groaned, and Nicolo's head jerked up. "You're alive," he said, relieved.

"You tried your best," he replied, and Nicolo bent over him, watching the myriad stab wounds heal, leaving no blemish.

"I don't underst--" Nicolo began, but there was a sharp pain in his side, and he fell on top of the Saracen and died again with his enemy's hot breath against his neck.

Twilight had set in when Nicolo woke again with a hand against his mouth. "Stay down," the Saracen whispered from under him. "We will wait for dark."

"I don't understand."

" _I_ don't understand," the Saracen countered, "but we can only find out together. Your people? My people? They will not understand at all."

Nicolo wanted to kill him again. "I didn't ask for this."

"Nor I! Quiet."

Nicolo closed his eyes and kept still as men in armor walked past. The Saracen's chest rose and fell, warm and foreign and just another man, after all. Well, perhaps not  _ just _ another man. Most men weren't unkillable. But Nicolo was no Saracen, and he too was afflicted with the same curse. The battlefield was strewn with bodies that did not rise, so the notion that somehow the Holy Land had done this to them didn't make sense either.

Maybe it was God's idea of a joke.

The footsteps receded and darkness fell.

"Are they gone?" the Saracen whispered.

Nicolo turned his head. His field of vision was empty of any living beings, but the moon lit corpses across the sands. "I believe so."

"Will you get off me, then? Unless you are comfortable."

Nicolo sat up and stared. "Does this amuse you?"

"How do you wish me to feel?" The Saracen cleaned his blade and sheathed it. Nicolo did the same, and they walked off the field together, stopping to take water skins and field rations from dead soldiers. The Saracen said some words over one of his own, and then took the clothes and armor from the body. "Mine are destroyed," he said, though he did not remove his own clothes.

Nicolo didn't know why he was following this man except that he had no other options.

They walked in silence. Away from the walls of Jerusalem. If the Saracen knew where he was taking them, he did not offer it to Nicolo. Nothing made sense. He should have returned to his people. He should have found a priest--a different priest, a better one who was not so deeply broken in so many terrible ways--and asked forgiveness, asked for help, asked for them to intercede with God.

And yet, here he was in the middle of a strange land with a heretic he'd killed so many times he'd lost count. He felt horrible about the last one. It wasn't a clean kill. He'd desecrated the man's body. He'd gone half-mad in a blind rage and panic and brutalized him. He shuddered to know he was capable of such violence. He was a soldier, not a barbarian. Not a monster. "I am sorry," he said, the first words spoken by either of them for hours. "Forgive me. For the last… It was as if I was seized with madness."

"I agree," the Saracen said. He slowed. "For my part, I am not prepared to apologize. You invaded my home and killed my people. Maybe I'll apologize for killing you tomorrow."

"You and your people…" Nicolo paused. What was the point? He wasn't going to persuade this man of the rightness of his cause, not easily, anyway. It was his calling as a priest to save and his calling as a soldier of God to kill heretics. He couldn't do the second one, and as for the first...well. It wasn't as if the Saracen was  _ wrong, _ precisely, although he certainly was framing it like they were innocents and not a sprawling kingdom that controlled most of the seas. "Where are you taking us?"

"Right here." He pointed to a cluster of palms and other trees. "We can rest here tonight. It would be hard to find us."

"No one will be looking. We died in battle."

"Several times." They sat down and drank from the waterskins. The Saracen spat his out, disgusted. "It's rotted."

Nicolo took it and tasted it. "It's wine."

"That's wine? That's disgusting."

"I'll drink it," Nicolo said, passing his water over. "It seems like the right moment. If it even still works." He took a deep drink that took several swallows to get down. "It still works," he reported a minute later. "You don't drink wine?"

"No, and now I know why."

"What is wrong with us, do you think? Why is this happening?"  _ Why is God rejecting his soldier? _

"I don't understand it at all. What's wrong with  _ us? _ What's wrong with  _ you? _ You're a madman!"

Nicolo drank more, grateful that his body could still experience the warmth and calming effects of alcohol. "I don't--I've never--I wanted it to stop. I thought if I tried hard enough, God would understand. He would stop keeping me out of his kingdom. You wouldn't know, you worship a different...you're a...How do you speak Latin?"

"Merchant family. You?"

"I'm a priest."

"Ah, that's why you sound so funny." The Saracen squinted in the darkness. "Yusuf al-Kaysani."

"What?"

"My name. Yusuf."

"Oh. Nicolo. Of Genova."

"Well, Nicolo of Genova, you know nothing of my relationship with God, as I know only that yours led you to invade my home and kill my countrymen. Women and children as well."

"I have never--"

"Maybe you have not killed the women and children. Maybe you think yourself clean. I assure you, your brotherhood is not similarly pure of intent. But I have felt your wrath, so you should understand why I don't trust that even that is true."

"I didn't--I didn't know that was in me," Nicolo confessed, the wine loosening his tongue. "I don't want it. I've never felt that before, I've never done anything like that, I…" He took a shuddering breath and drank more wine in hopes that it might slow his spiral.

Yusuf offered, "I suppose you have never been killed so many times in a row before."

The Saracens were soulless beasts, stopping the children of God from seeing the Holy Land, spreading out and ever extending their reach. But this one was being kind far beyond what Nicolo could ever expect, even from his own people, so maybe that was all lies too. "I was afraid," he said, unable to look Yusuf in the eyes.

"I'm afraid too." Yusuf's voice was soft, unsteady, sincere.

Which was all it took for Nicolo di Genova, priest and soldier of God, to come to the sickening realization that they were just people. Just people with the same capacity for kindness and cruelty as any Christian. He could try to believe Yusuf was an exception, but he had no reason to think so any more than he himself was exceptional among Christians, aside from their mutual freakish inability to stay dead. God above, he'd lived his whole life believing so many things about the Saracens, but he'd never once  _ spoken _ to one. "I think we were meant to meet," he said, voice shaking.

"I think a lot of people died so we could meet," Yusuf countered.

"I think--" Nicolo tried to think of an answer, but the faces of the men he'd killed swam before him, distorted, bloody, vague, already leaving his memory. People. Just people, like Yusuf. The wine sloshed in his gut. He lurched forward, rolled onto his front, and threw up again.

"You have a weak stomach, don't you?" Yusuf wrinkled his nose at the stench and offered Nicolo the water, which he drank gratefully.

"I think I need to sleep," Nicolo said miserably.

"Not in your own vomit," Yusuf said, and he dragged him well clear of it. "We likely won't be seen here. Sleep."

"Do you think we can die?" Nicolo mumbled, lying down on his side and trying to find a space to get comfortable.

"I don't know," Yusuf answered.

The wine had gone to his head, what was left in his body, anyway, and Nicolo fell asleep soon despite his fears. If Yusuf killed him in his sleep, it probably wouldn't matter. He deserved it. Yusuf was not a cruel executioner, either. To be killed by him was not so terrible. As he drifted off, he heard quiet murmurs in Arabic, but Yusuf wasn't speaking to anyone else, so Nicolo slept and dreamed of two women. Flashes of fighting and of deep embraces.

He jerked awake the next morning, shaking and trying to get his bearings. "Where am I?" There was a sound behind him, and he rolled over to see the man who had killed him. "Fluffy beard," he said, confused, and thankfully in Genoese. Yusuf. His curse partner. Right. They had declared a truce and deserted together. Yusuf blinked awake. His dark eyes bored into Nicolo's until he sat up, looked at the sun, winced, and planted himself a few meters from Nico, facing south by southwest. He raised his hands and began speaking in his own tongue. Ah, that's what he had been doing last night when Nicolo was nodding off. Praying.

Nico had seen this before, distantly, but he'd understood it as the foreign, heretical rituals of a culture of infidels. Now it just looked like prayer. No longer faceless hordes of the enemy chanting dark things, just one man on his knees, bending down, speaking to his God.

Which didn't feel so different from Nicolo's own prayers.

Yusuf turned away, then to Nico and finished. Was he speaking to him? Yusuf sighed and switched to Latin. "I was late."

"Maybe you will be barred from Heaven," Nicolo said, immediately regretting it.

But Yusuf laughed. "Perhaps so. That only gives me more time to see what the world has to offer." Then he looked more pensive. "That is why you attacked me the way you did, isn't it? You said as much."

"I don't know. Maybe. It was many things, I think I…" Nicolo shook his head. "I regret it."

"Do you regret killing my people?"

Nicolo's mouth was dry. He had no answer. It had not occurred to him, back in Genova, when he'd been called to join God's soldiers, that he would be called to account by one of the heretics he'd come to defeat.

Yusuf's gaze softened, and he opened his purse. "Break fast with me." He tore some bread in half and held out a piece to Nicolo, who took it.

He'd been fighting a great holy war against beasts, non-humans, or worse, humans who rejected all that was good and therefore deserved to die. And then there was Yusuf, and he was only one man, but all the Saracens were people, were individual souls. He could be locked in eternal battle with Yusuf, but others would die. His own people, most of whom would never have the chance to speak to their enemy like a person, only like a warring adversary. Yusuf's people, who were not simply monsters to be cut down.

Even if they could undo this curse, could Nicolo truly return and take his place in the ranks of the soldiers of God? It was easier to call the Saracens infidels at a distance. Harder to deny their humanity when breaking bread with one.

"What do you say to your God?" he asked.

Yusuf looked confused. "My God? It's only God. Yours, mine, He is the same."

Hmm. Fine. "What do you say to God in your prayers? Or is it rude to ask?"

"Well, no. They aren't really private prayers. Mostly," he said with a smile, "we say 'God is great.' What do you say?"

"Mostly we ask for bread and forgiveness and to avoid temptation." Nicolo found the waterskin and took a gulp.

"You don't need to ask God for bread," Yusuf said. "I've already given you some."

Nicolo choked, inhaling water and coughing painfully. "Blasphemer," he wheezed when he was able to speak again.

"I'll try to offer forgiveness and temptation as well."

"You have it backwa--you're not God!" He coughed again and finally took a few deep breaths.

"You can't bother God with every little thing. I forgive you for killing me, even the last time. I'm not sure what you want me to tempt you with, but we'll think of something."

"You're not meant to tempt--God isn't--I'm not asking--" Nicolo sputtered until he saw the twinkle in Yusuf's eye. "Oh, you're very funny."

Yusuf laughed at him. "God approves of fun. Joy is an important part of life, and we are still alive."

"Somehow."

"What was it you said to wake me up this morning?"

"What?"

"You said something, not Latin."

"Oh, I…" Nicolo tried to remember.  _ Fluffy beard. _ Right. "I don't remember," he lied.

Yusuf shrugged at him and finished his bread. "Well, Nicolo, what will we do now?"

Nico considered. He had no idea, no notion at all of what they could possibly do. He didn't even know what he wanted anymore under the best of circumstances, which they were obviously not. "I can't even begin to think. I don't know."

"We can't go back. We're dead or we're deserters."

"Or...or prisoners."

"No," Yusuf said. "No, we're not doing that."

"I meant we could lie," Nicolo said, not sure if he wanted that at all.

"No!" Yusuf seized his wrist. "Do you want to be alone with this? Whatever is wrong with us,  _ no one _ else will understand. What if we can't die at all? What if we don't age, Nicolo of Genova? What if we're bound to this world for years, for centuries, and no one else can ever know us?"

"No, it isn't--it  _ can't _ be--"

Yusuf's grip tightened, and Nicolo had the brief, horrible thought that if he freed himself by cutting off one of their hands, it would probably grow back or reattach. "I will not see it by myself," Yusuf said, getting closer, his eyes darting between Nico's. "I refuse. Even if we can die naturally, this is a terrible secret to keep alone." He was so close now that Nicolo's brain was reminding him very loudly of the stupid, pointless note it had taken and now would not let go of.  _ Fluffy beard. _

But he had a point. Going back to the army was the easy way out of this...this  _ thing, _ this unwanted relationship, but it wouldn't fix the problem of Nicolo being firmly rejected by death itself. He had kept things to himself for most of his life, but now the thing wrong with him wasn't a simple, known, venial sin, shocking to some, distressing to Nicolo personally, but not beyond comprehension. No, this, this made no sense. No one else would understand. If Yusuf was right, if they were trapped here forever, wandering the world alone sounded like a nightmare.

At least Yusuf was funny.

"All right. All right. You're right." Nicolo knew he was agreeing to something massive, but there wasn't much of a choice right now. Yusuf held his gaze for a moment longer before releasing him and backing away, taking his stupid fluffy beard with him.

He wasn't unpleasant to look at, either.

Nico had so much penance to do. He couldn't think that way. Sodomy was venial, right? But consorting with Saracens…

Who even knew anymore. As long as he didn't  _ do _ anything, then he could  _ think _ whatever he wanted. The problem was the doing. Because he could do penance for it, but if he did it once, he was almost certain he would do it again. (Maybe not. Maybe it was actually not fun at all. But really, if it weren't so pleasant, people wouldn't be so tempted to do it over and over in spite of all that penance. Not that he had never committed sodomy. But, crucially, he'd never done it with someone else, and now he was thinking about a Saracen's goddamn fluffy beard against his neck--no, that was definitely not something another priest would let him off so lightly for.)

"You're right. We stay together," Nicolo added. "At least until we understand what's wrong with us." He walked off to relieve himself, and as he did he looked at his clothes and armor. They were torn and bloody. Not nearly as bad as Yusuf's, of course, but there was a lot of exposed skin that was itself still covered in dried blood, flesh, and ripped threads. He needed a bath.

"I don't suppose the rest of the wine survived last night?" he asked as he returned to their makeshift campsite.

Yusuf picked up the open wineskin and held it upside down. A single drop fell out. "You spilled the rest of it when you were sick."

Of course he had. "It's that sort of day," Nico sighed.

"I need to wash," Yusuf commented. "You do too, but maybe you're used to looking like that." He waved his hand in Nico's direction. "And smelling like that."

"Have you ever met a European?"

"How else would I know about your terrible bathing habits?"

"I was planning to bathe." Yusuf kept insulting him and he wasn't sure why. Maybe he was trying to see if Nicolo could be set off by smaller things than being killed over and over. "I'm not going to snap again."

"We'll see," Yusuf said, but his voice was light enough. "I think if we walk long enough this way, we'll find a pond or a well."

He was right. After a bit of walking they came upon a watering hole. Several grey herons took off as they came close but returned quickly, landing on the other side of the pond. Yusuf took a look around and began removing his armor and clothes, throwing them in a pile. "I'll just bury those," he said. "They're done for."

Nico swallowed and started to undress as well.

"I think I'll point you at rapists and cruel slavers and see if you can use that bloodlust for good."

He didn't respond. He wished Yusuf would stop bringing up his fit of madness. "Should we fill the waterskins?"

"Too still. Stagnant. Clean enough for bathing, but not for drinking. We'll find a settlement soon enough, and refill then. And clean out your rotten one."

"Have you truly never drunk wine?" Nicolo wondered, scrubbing the blood off his mail. There were broken links in the chest, abdomen, and side, but Nicolo wasn't exactly a noble knight, so his armor wasn't the best made. It was still better than nothing, and a spear will pierce a lot of armor types.

"Merchant family, as I said," Yusuf said as he sat bare in the shallows and splashed his face. "I'm familiar, but I've never drunk it. Alcohol is haram."

"What?"

"Forbidden. The sin outweighs the benefit."

Nicolo draped his mail over a log. "I can understand that." The blood wasn't going to come off his clothes, and he didn't have a needle and thread to repair them, but he could at least remove the bits of flesh and guts. Once he was satisfied, he laid them out to dry and started to wash the gunk off his body. Reviving the blood and bits in water had brought back the battle stench, and Nico realized Yusuf was watching him closely.

"If you want to commission an oil painting," he suggested. Maybe if he could make himself seem less threatening, Yusuf wouldn't tease him or watch him so much.

Yusuf looked delighted at Nico's humor attempt. "No need," he said, grinning. "You can pay me directly, I paint." But he let his gaze drift away and finished washing himself. "How's my back?" He lifted his dark hair up to reveal his shoulders and Nico was just grateful he couldn't see the fluffy beard right now.

"Toward the middle, you still have some things…"

Yusuf tried to swipe at it, but missed. It didn't look like he could reach.

"No, down. I'll get it." Nicolo bent down and splashed water on Yusuf's back and wiped away the mess of blood and guts stuck there. "I suppose it is the least I can do."

Yusuf shook his head a few times, his wet curls flinging droplets of water all over Nicolo's face, then turned around. "Your turn," he said, pushing Nico's shoulder.

Nicolo let him, turned around, cleaned his front while Yusuf washed his back.

"So strange," Yusuf murmured, his fingertips running across Nico's skin. "No marks, no scars. Do you think we are dead after all?"

"What?" Nicolo said. "No, I think we are alive. Some sort of curse, or God's idea of a joke, I don't know, but if this is death, it does not make any sense."  _ Because if I am bound for heaven, you must not be. And if you are, I am not. And if there is a heaven for Saracens it cannot be the same as the one for Christians. And this does not feel like hell with your fingers down my back like that. _ Not that Nicolo didn't feel a bit damned right at this moment, but he certainly didn't feel tortured.

"You sound so sure, but how would we know?"

Nicolo turned around. "Because…" He tried to think of a less insulting answer. "Because it's exactly the same as living, except that we can't die, but we're the only ones. You saw the bodies."

"I guess you're right."

They finished cleaning up, waited for Nicolo's clothes to dry while Yusuf did his midday prayers, and left the pond, Yusuf wearing the gear he had taken from one of his dead countrymen. They didn't know where they were going, and it wasn't particularly safe for a soldier of God to travel with a Saracen warrior, so they tried to avoid other invading European soldiers and keep food in their purses and water in their skins. The suspicion between them faded slowly but did not dissipate.

On the eighth day since the battle, they ended up in an abandoned village, half-burned and falling to pieces. Nicolo was afraid to ask if the damage had been done by his people. They built a fire and Nico sat down. Yusuf borrowed his longsword and swung it around. "Interesting feel," he commented, sheathing it. "From this end of it, I mean."

Interesting feel to be on the other end of a blade too, Nico thought, and as night fell, it stuck in his head. He couldn't shake the thought. In an effort to replace it with something else, he said, "When you asked what I said to you that first morning, I lied."

Yusuf looked up from his dried dates. "Oh?"

Nico considered asking Yusuf not to laugh, but really, the man's laughter was really quite pleasant, so he just got right to it. "I said 'fluffy beard.'"

Yusuf touched his beard as a smile spread across his face. "Why?"

"Ah, because, when you, when I, the first time I died, or thought I...you were the last thing I saw, and that's what I thought, and it's been burned into my mind since then."

"Hmm." Yusuf only laughed a little. "Unfortunately mine is far worse, the only thing I could focus on when I thought I was dead was your eyes. You have striking eyes. The color of the sea. Felt like you kept staring at me, but maybe dying just made me think it took a long time."

"No, I...I did," Nico confessed.

"Oh. Hmm." Yusuf grinned. "No, I've decided. Fluffy beard is much funnier." He laughed, and Nicolo found himself smiling too.

But the horrible, devilish thoughts about the injuries he could receive without damaging himself did not go away.

**Author's Note:**

> it's not the end! there is a [second part in the series](https://archiveofourown.org/chapters/61840267)


End file.
